Tongue-and-groove materials find many and varied uses in building construction. They may be employed as flooring and/or sub-flooring, under-layment, siding, wall material, ceiling material, roofing material, and so forth. The firm engagement of adjacent pieces of tongue-and-groove material along substantially the entire length of their common edges yields a structurally sound continuous installed surface. This feature is especially important for siding and roofing materials where the tongue-and-groove material is often utilized to form a weather barrier, and for flooring where the tongue-and-groove material must bear substantial loads. It is therefore quite important that adjacent pieces of tongue-and-groove materials be fully and properly engaged when they are installed.
As tongue-and-groove materials are installed, it is therefore necessary to apply substantial force to completely insert the tongue of one piece of tongue-and-groove material into the groove of an adjacent piece, and to apply that force over substantially the entire length of the pieces. This force is frequently applied as a series of abrupt impacts, accomplished by hitting or tapping a piece of tongue-and-groove material with a hammer or similar tool, sometimes with an intervening block or pull-bar. While often effective, this common method of installation has significant drawbacks. The series of impacts along the length of a piece of tongue-and-groove material being installed, while engaging the segment of the piece in the immediate area of the impact, will often also jar other segments of the piece or adjacent pieces loose. This results in a slow and tedious installation process, wherein the same segments and pieces of tongue-and-groove material must be hit and re-hit many times until one happens to get everything "just right". This is a particularly vexing problem with tongue-and-groove flooring materials, including laminate flooring materials, which must be glued together as they are installed. With laminate flooring materials, it is absolutely essential for proper performance of the installed floor that the pieces of flooring be evenly forced together and firmly held as the glue sets or cures, thereby yielding a continuous glue seal along the entire edge of each piece of flooring. The constant jostling of pieces that results from repeated hammer blows renders this procedure quite difficult.
Another obvious drawback of such a method is the damage to the tongue-and-groove material that can and does frequently occur as it is repeatedly whacked with a hammer, even when an intervening block or pull-bar is used. The tongues and/or grooves may be damaged, disturbing the structural integrity of the finished area of installed tongue-and-groove material and/or the sealed edges desired upon installation. Damage to the exposed surface of the material may also result from repeated impacts during installation, resulting in cosmetic damage to the finished installed surface and/or reduced useful life of the installed surface.
It is therefore desirable to provide methods and apparatus for installing tongue-and-groove materials which avoid these drawbacks of current installation apparatus and methods.